• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, February 12, 2018

Microsoft Bing recently rolled out the ability to login to its Webmaster Tools with social accounts including Google and Facebook.

Are Bing execs finally getting smart about growing the company's ad business? Now notification from the webmaster tools message center will be sent to the email address associated with the login. Both social login and the ability to have webmaster tools notifications sent to accounts outside of the Microsoft ecosystem were some of the top requested features in 2017.

Christi Olson, search evangelist for Bing Ads, pointed to feedback received from webmasters looking for an easier path to the tools because too many sites now feature secured social login that are difficult to access.

Second, the shift allows for email notifications to be sent to addresses outside of the Microsoft Outlook and Hotmail systems.

Prior to this change, users could only log in using a Microsoft account and all notifications were sent to that specific account. Using social login will allow individuals to have emails sent to work accounts that tied to their social profile.

Microsoft began rolling out the feature on February 9 to webmasters in the United States and expects to continue the rollout in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Latin America and Asia -Pacific regions.

All good for Bing. Marketers have begun to spread their budget more evenly across platforms. Search ad spending across the Bing and Yahoo platforms grew 32% in the fourth quarter of 2017, compared with the year-ago fourth quarter, according to Merkle's most recent quarterly benchmark report.

Marketers also spent more on Bing Product Ads. Ad spend on the platform grew 43% year-over-year in the final quarter of the year. And mobile search traffic also grew about seven-times higher in the quarter, compared with the year-ago quarter.